Zolyan Suren

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  • № 3, 2018

    • Language of Politics or Language in Political Function?

      The article attempts to distinguish between the notions of “language of politics” and “language in political function”. The “language of politics” is usually defined as language means used in political communication or for political purposes. The author suggests that “language in political function” would be a more appropriate term for such definition.

      Politics can be viewed as a communicative modus of human activity, in which language plays the role of an instrument or even an instrument of all political instruments. The growing influence of communicative and semantic factors upon the political processes entails an even greater increase in the importance of semiotic characteristics. However, the reverse perspective can also be true: interpreting politics as a special form of linguistic activity — accommodation of the world to words produced through the institutionalized speech acts. Performativity and autoreferentiality of institutional facts that constitute social ontology imply that under the guise of representing reality the text actually forms reality.

      The linguistic and semiotic characteristics of language in political function can be supplemented by communicative ones through introducing a political function into R.Jakobson’s pattern of language functions. It can be interpreted as an inverted magical function, when “an absent or inanimate „third person“” turns into not only an addressee, but also a sender of the message. In the process of the political communication, not only an addressee and an addresser, but also communication itself, are institutionalized. The real communication is formalized as its semiotic analogue. As in the case with the magic function of language, a speech act is assumed to lead to a change of the world, and the participants of this act are endowed with the appropriate power, but the source of this power is not mythology, but rather the social structure of society.

      DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2018-90-3-31-49

      Pages: 31-49